January 2019 Playthrough - Lunar Knights

[GrayGhost81]

Hey gang! Forgive me for being so quiet on this thread. I've had an interesting time with this game. I just listened to the latest episode of the Playcast and talking about the game I gushed about what a good time I was having with it, and I definitely was at the time. I was cruising through the game and was actually a bit concerned that it would be too easy for a lot of people. Unfortunately, about two weeks ago I ran into the boss of chapter 5 and had a super difficult time with it. I banged my head against the battle for a few days before getting a few tips from an FAQ and was finally able to push through (God bless that TRC 'win button' amirite?). Then, I barely passed the space-ship segment by the skin of my teeth. I was in the final chapter, and I thought I was in the clear. On the contrary, I noticed a serious difficulty spike. At first I tried grinding, then resorted to turning cheats on, then I put the game down for a couple of days. Then I realized that I have no desire to play it anymore. As I wrote about in my blog post last month, it can be hard to identify what makes us want to stick with a game through the end and what makes us drop it like a bad habit. I'm a little sad that I'll have to invoke the last resort of watching the rest of the game on youtube, but alas, that is what I intend to do.

So having put all that out there, I'll give you some of my thoughts on the game.

-As a huge worshiper of Hideo Kojima and Kojima Productions, I was super psyched to see how 'Metal Gear' the game would be, and the elements are definitely there. The items degrading in your inventory are straight out of MGS3, and of course the whistling mechanic is a stand-in for the knock or knuckle crack from the MGS series.

-The music is phenomenal. I love the jazzy upbeat sound of most of it, and enjoy the cartoony darkness of the more creepy tracks. I also love the colorful anime graphics and presentation. The environmental detail and sprite designs are great.

-Agree with Crabby that the spaceship sequences are not great. I'm not a fan of games that make you go crazy on the touchscreen. I always feel like I'm going to scratch it. If only you could move the ship with the d-pad and shoot with the touchscreen it would have been awesome. And yeah, these sequences go on for way too long. This is definitely this game's version of the gummi ship from Kingdom Hearts.

-The story is either nonexistent or completely unmemorable. This is quite a shock coming from the team who made it. I will definitely be consulting a plot synopsis when I have to recount the story for the podcast. I almost feel that our checkpoints are irrelevant this time around because although I can see and endgame twist coming, I don't feel like anything can really be spoiled here because the story is rather nebulous and secondary to the gameplay.

Anyway, for those still enjoying the game, good on ya! I definitely have no animosity for this title. This is not a 'rage quit' situation. I'm more sad really. My enthusiasm for the game deflated in in such a strange and sudden way, it just makes me a little sad. Not very sad, just a little. 

[Crabmaster2000]

I just finished Chapter 5 yesterday. Wow was that a meaty chapter. I literally doubled my play time from chapters 1-4 in just the one area. Really felt like the game was coming to a climax/close so I'm kinda curious what chapter 6 has in store for me. I really liked that dungeon in chapter 5 though. I love it when games make you use all of the skills you've learned throughout the game in one epic battle. Having the castle be so huge and diverse that you had to leave to change climates and equipment was a lot of fun and then splitting up your characters again put some extra tension on top of that near the end of the climb up this crazy tower. I liked the twist on the boss formula too where instead of just "here's a boss and here's a slightly stronger version of the boss" they had both characters fight separate bosses and then come together to fight the head Vampire was a nice touch.

@grayghost81 - Are you confusing another chapter with Chapter 5? There was no space battle in chapter 5 at all. Was it chapter 4 maybe were you felt there was the drastic difficulty spike? Also curious what level you were during those areas and if you backtracked to previous dungeons to get the better armor and items once you had the Terrestrials to open up different areas. Also did you spend any resources to improve your weapons? I've boosted up my Vangaurd Sword and Witch gun both pretty well and they do a great deal of damage even to bosses. Finding a few of those scroll that give +10 status points is pretty helpful too. And the Cool Banana saves a bit of stress.

Totally agree about the story being nonexistant. The parts that are there are so lame it's also unmemorable like you said. I'm having the opposite reaction with my enthusiasm level though where the gameplay is really starting to grab me in chapter 5 now and by chapter 4 I was starting to get really bored with the game mechanics. Now that I'm bouncing equipment around, powering up weapons, gathering materials, changing climate I'm starting to get into it a bit more. Really curious what Chapter 6 is gonna be like since 5 seemed like such a "final stage" kind of level.

[singlebanana]

Totally agree about the story being nonexistant. The parts that are there are so lame it's also unmemorable like you said. I'm having the opposite reaction with my enthusiasm level though where the gameplay is really starting to grab me in chapter 5 now and by chapter 4 I was starting to get really bored with the game mechanics.

I actually like the idea behind the story of this game, but agree that it's pretty non-existent for the most part. Lots of rinse and repeat: get through level, boss battle, shmup stage to coffin fryer, REPEAT, with no real exposition. The idea that vampires are killing and enslaving humans for meals is pretty great, but at times I have this odd sense that I'm being made to feel guilty for eating animals and plants ....  I dunno, weird story and justification dynamic.

Now that I'm bouncing equipment around, powering up weapons, gathering materials, changing climate I'm starting to get into it a bit more. Really curious what Chapter 6 is gonna be like since 5 seemed like such a "final stage" kind of level.

I thought that the length of Chapter 5 was really exhausting and it really made the game feel unbalanced. However, I did like the castle segment with the fetch puzzles and the Chapter 5 boss battle a lot!  I felt like it was really tough and took a good deal to learn it, which made it so very rewarding for me!!!...........but............wait...........this isn't the end of the game??  Yep, I think we all had that feeling. Hell, I even took a pic with my phone here to post that I finished the game. Not so fast brah.

Anyway, I won't get into my thoughts on Chapter 6, but I feel like we are all going to have a similar opinion when that time comes. 

What I would like to do in our upcoming final thoughts segment on the podcast is for each of us to come up with one word that best describes the game and discuss your reason(s) for choosing that word.  If any of you who are not on the podcast would like to participate, we would definitely read those on the air. We are podcasting this weekend, so I will be asking for these soon, as well as Shawn and I will be posting our question of the month on social media.

[Crabmaster2000]

The story definitely has interesting seeds in it, they just utterly fail to explore the idea at all imo. And there were at least 2 moments of dialogue that totally sound like they are making anyone who eats organic life out to be a monster. Which is how I always feel when I'm consuming my salads with tears streaming down my face.

Can totally agree that chapter 5 was unbalanced. I don't think that's a bad thing though in this case. I wanted some more meat to the game at this point and it delivered where I felt it was lacking previously. Chapter 6 could have either been cut completely or just tacked onto the end of 5. It was inconsequential to the story since the whole immortals thing was reveal and explained in chapter 5, the dungeon paled in comparison to the one you just completed also in chapter 5 and the final battle was with the worst part of the game, the space battle!

My one word description of the game is Unactualized which sums up my final thoughts on this one I think. There is a lot of interesting potential here from the plot points to the terrestrials system, to the climate system, the equipment/upgrade system but none of those feel as fleshed out as they should be especially considering both where this game falls in it's series timeline and the prestige of the development team behind it.

PS- Does anyone know what the website link during the credits did when it was up and running? I took a pic of my code and tried it out, but it seems like Konami killed whatever it was supposed to be.

PS - post the podcast question in here too. Some of us are not on social media

[singlebanana]

PS- Does anyone know what the website link during the credits did when it was up and running? I took a pic of my code and tried it out, but it seems like Konami killed whatever it was supposed to be.

I did the same thing when I got the code. Unfortunately, it looks like the link is no longer active.  I tried to research it, but only got links to cheat code pages.....

PS - post the podcast question in here too. Some of us are not on social media

Will do. Not a bad idea to make this a habit.

[singlebanana]

During January, we are playing our first handheld game (Lunar Knights)  in a few years. Our @RFGPlayCast question of the month is: "What is your favorite handheld console and why?"  Let us know and your answer will be featured on the next show.

[Crabmaster2000]

This took a lot of deliberation, but I've decided that my favorite handheld system is the New 3DS XL. If you know me I'm not a hardware guy, I'm all about the software. For someone like myself who is very much into Japanese games with a soft spot for both RPGs and retro style games it just does a lot right for me. It's got maybe the best offering of jRPGs on any system with series like Dragon Warrior, Fire Emblem, Shin Megami Tensei, Etrian Odyssey, Pokemon, Xenoblade, Kingdom Hearts, and the Mario & Luigi games all very well represented and that's not even mentioning games that only have one fantastic entry on the system. I get my retro fix with great titles from series like Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Mario Kart, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Resident Evil, and Metroid. Puzzle games? you bet! Rhythm games? Yeah it can! Quirky experimental stuff.... for sure! It really has games that hit all my sweet spots. And it's got the amazing hardware to back it up! For starters it can play the nearly equally wonderful and vast DS library with zero issues. It's got a couple of great sized and looking screens, battery life is insane on it (thanks to another nice feature of the dynamic backlight!), touch screen is great with games that are designed to take advantage of it and is both very scratch resistant and has the right amount of sensitivity. You ever play a game in 3D mode on a regular 3DS for more than 2 minutes? Me either? Have I played through a full 80+ hour RPG completely in 3D on the NEW 3DS XL, yes I have. The head tracking to adjust the 3D to your position works awesome and finally let's me take advantage of the feature the hardware was named for. And being a Nintendo Console it's built like a tank. We've got multiple NEW 3DS XL systems at my house and ALL of them are still in excellent shape even having them stuck in pockets, left out over night, dropped, owned by a 7-10 year old, etc. We've lost the occasional Stylus, but that is it. Really pleased with what may very well be the last dedicated Nintendo handheld. If it is the last one at least they went out on a high note in my books.

Shout out to the GBA SP which was my runner up, and I could see the Nintendo Switch fighting for a spot near the top of my favorite Handheld list in a couple years when it's got the software to back up the awesome hardware.

[singlebanana]

Here you go Crabby! Big props to bickman2k for sending me this link:

https://web.archive.org/w...hts/america/password.html

Hope I can find the password I wrote down to try it out.

[mumboking]

Here you go Crabby! Big props to bickman2k for sending me this link:

https://web.archive.org/w...hts/america/password.html

Hope I can find the password I wrote down to try it out.

At a guess, it won't work even if you did have the password.
It probably relies on server-side scripts (which can't be archived) to check the password.

[Crabmaster2000]

I tried my code a few times and it just keeps saying that I'm inputting it incorrectly. I tried swapping stuff like 0 and O to see if I made an error, but I'm out of ideas now. Let me know if yours works. I do like the art style in this game so a custom wallpaper could be cool.

[MetalFRO]

I'm going to finally try and get started with my game tomorrow. Barring unforeseen circumstances, I'm going to try and stream my attempt to take on G.I. Joe: The Atlantis Factor. I'll likely play tomorrow afternoon, if anyone wants to come root me on, laugh when I die, etc.

https://twitch.tv/gurugameboy

[mumboking]

I found the screensaver archived: https://web.archive.org/w...hts_Screensaver_setup.exe

[douglie007]

So I have tried to play this, but I just not really enjoying the dungeon crawling.  Also the sun guy seems to run out power and he doesnt have a neutral weapon to use. So he doesnt get used much.